Gold and Glory: The Road to El Dorado (Game Boy Color)

Gold and Glory: The Road to El Dorado

Game Boy Color - USA - 1st edition.

Developer Planet Interactive Development Publisher Ubi Soft Entertainment Published 2000-04-30 Platforms Game Boy Color Genres Licensed, Multi-genre, Platformer Themes Cartoon, Wilderness Series The Road to El Dorado Distribution Commercial

Gold and Glory: The Road to El Dorado is a platformer developed by Planet Interactive Development and published by Ubi Soft Entertainment for the Game Boy Color on 2000-04-30. The game was released around the same time as the graphic adventure of the same name, but is a completely different game.

The game follows the story line of the the animated film, The Road to El Dorado. Miguel and Tulio are lovable rogues who get into trouble in Spain, so, to avoid being executed, they stowaway on a conquistador's ship to South America. Once there they discover a huge treasure of gold and are treated as gods. At first, they plan on robbing the natives, but, other things happen to change their minds.

Personal

Own?	No.
Won?	Yes.
Finished	2023-01-06.

I was searching through the Game Boy Color's catalog of games and found this one. Having seen the film, and assuming it would be a fairly easy victory, I started playing this game and beat it.

Review

3	3	4	4	3

Best Version: Game Boy Color

— This section contains spoilers! —

Good

• The art of the movie's characters was well-converted to pixel art.
• Mark Cooksey composed a competent, albeit short, soundtrack. None of the songs stand out, but they make good use of the hardware.

Bad

• The controls aren't very good.
  • The jumps are very floaty. While the slow jump makes it easier to control your descent, it's rather uncomfortable when you're used to good platformers.
  • The hit boxes on platforms are not visually apparent.
  • You can jump up onto platforms, you can't jump down from them.
  • The camera pans around to keep the player near the back of the screen, which is nice, but simply turning causes it to start panning. So, when you press left and right in rapid succession, it jumps back and forth which is pretty disorienting.
• The hit detection in your attack is well off. You can swing your sword and very clearly not hit an enemy, but it still counts as a hit.
• The enemy design is boring. Most of them lack character and are just animals like snakes, scorpions, and bats. Also, their AI is very rudimentary with most just slowly pacing back and forth making no attempt to attack the player. Also, Enemies frequently appear so abruptly there is no time to avoid them.
• A sack is a lame throwing weapon.
• The game lets you choose between Miguel and Tulio, but they play exactly the same. It's just a skin.
• The auto-scroller levels are not very fun. At least they're an attempt to break up the monotony.

Ugly

• The game is very homogeneous. There is a minor difficulty increase, but all the levels play the same, so the game is pretty boring.

Media

Box Art

While the titles may be identical, at least the GBC box looks different from the PlayStation version. All regions use the same art, Miguel and Tulio riding Altivo with a step pyramid in the back, only the European cover zooms out a little on the art. It uses the same typeface as the film.

• 

  USA.

• 

  Europe.

Documentation

• 

  Manual - USA.

Videos

Longplay.

Play Online

Game Boy Color (Europe), Game Boy Color (USA)

Representation

Strong female character?	Fail	Chel appears very briefly in a cutscene.
Bechdel test?	Fail	There is only one woman.
Strong person of color character?	Fail	Chel, Chief Tannabok, and Tzekel-Kan as well as plenty of other Mesoamericans, but you're mostly beating them up.
Queer character?	Fail	There are no queer characters.

Links